A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.

A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.

“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”

In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.

  • Flying SquidM
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    67 months ago

    none of them really want the social safety nets

    Many bills that have been submitted suggest otherwise.

    • @Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
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      -17 months ago

      And how did those bills go?

      Congress loves to let issues fester to garner attention and drum up support. They’ve been fucking around with the debt ceiling for decades to do that, and that’s a problem that they create from whole cloth.

      The political will of the populace to make real changes to address the root causes of homicide are squandered by focusing on the weapons used. Want to see those bills pass? Don’t buy into the dog and pony show that is gun control.

      If you really, truly believe that banning guns is the silver bullet to solving homicides get the second amendment repealed. All the half measures that get thrown out time and time again are usually unconstitutional and doomed to fail, they’re just there to keep the public engaged.

      • Flying SquidM
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        47 months ago

        So… you’re saying that because Democratic bills put forward to increase the safety social net get voted down by Republicans, Democrats don’t want a social safety net?

        gun control.

        banning guns

        And here is where I know you are not here in good faith. You are conflating the two as if they were the same thing, or that everyone who proposes the former actually wants the latter.

          • Flying SquidM
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            47 months ago

            I’ll tell myself that ‘gun control’ and ‘banning guns’ are not the same thing and never will be, no matter how much people like you dishonestly try to conflate them.